Think this is an old article, got Pamela and Calista...
My cup doesn't runneth over
Sumiko Tan
THE SUNDAY TIMES
Men can't stop staring at them while women can't decide whether to upsize or downsize their glands. The whole of society seems obsessed.
Perhaps I'm just a case of sour grapes, but I'm beginning to get a bit weary of the world's fascination with Pamela Anderson's silicon-enhanced breasts.
Unless you've been stuck in the moon these last couple of years, you'd have known that Anderson has the most talked-about and written-about bosom in the world (and, there I go, adding to the literature on her mammary glands).
Not since Dolly Parton's ridiculously eye-catching twin peaks have a pair of breasts been so discussed.
But whereas Parton cuts a cartoon-like figure with her way-over-the-top top, Anderson's assets have been bountiful enough to cause people to stare at them, but still natural-looking enough not to make them snigger.
They have, in fact, thrust the 31-year-old Canadian-born actress into what some would even deem "greatness". She is currently the most famous sex symbol as well as the most popular Internet personality in the universe.
It was reported recently, in the venerable Wall Street Journal no less, that there are more than 145,000 Internet web pages -or the equivalent of 13,300 books -using the former Baywatch star as a lure to hawk products and services.
Now, you would think Anderson would be pleased with the fame, fortune (even if she doesn't profit from her Internet exposure, she is very rich) and adulation that her gravity-defying breasts have brought her.
After all, the reason she had them surgically amplified must have been to grab attention, right?
But no. Two weeks ago, she made further headlines when she had surgery to remove those implants. She's now gone down from a bra size of 36D to 36C.
She explained: "I just didn't feel like I looked very good. I was really kind of getting self-conscious."
Well, I think she'll have to be self-conscious a while longer. More than ever will people be checking out her chest now, just to see how much it has shrunk.
Still, the actress is feeling buoyant. In fact, she said in her "coming out" interview, where she wore a low-cut top showcasing her still-bountiful breasts: "I feel like I'm a petite person."
Petite? Get real.
AS YOU can tell by now, I am envious of women who are generously endowed.
If the old Pamela Anderson were a 10, the new Pamela Anderson an 8 and anorexic Calista Flockhart of Ally McBeal fame a beanpole 2, I guess I would clock in somewhere in the region of a 2.5.
If I held my breath, I could make it a 3, and if I wore my Wonderbra, I could even pass off as a 3.5.
Do all women with smallish assets have a whiff of an inferiority complex like I do?
Until recently, I often wished I was bigger up there. It's hard not to feel that way with the cleavage being celebrated the way it is in the media.
Pick up any fashion magazine -yes, mainstream ones -and breast upon breast pops out at you, both in the advertisements and editorial pages. As you flip through the pages, the almost subliminal message the reader gets is that beautiful women are nearly all stacked.
And, mind you, it is not only men who put a premium on big tops. Most female magazines are run by women editors, and they, too, obviously acknowledge the allure of bigger breasts.
A voluptuous bust, I feel, actually does deserve the admiring attention it receives. Big breasts add sensuality to a woman's silhouette. Their rotundity symbolises, like ripe fruit, her fertility, femaleness and erotic aura -qualities that are attractive to most men.
In fact, this is the reason women who flaunt their breasts are viewed so suspiciously by other women, especially in the workplace, which society has deemed a non-sexual zone.
The American academic Camile Paglia, who, in my book, is the funniest, most commonsensical and readable feminist around, puts it this way in her book Vamps & Tramps: "Most women, as well as most men, gay, instantly appraise whether a woman has "good legs' or a big bosom, not because these attributes diminish her or reduce her to "meat' (another feminist canard) but because they unjustifiably add to her power in ways that may destabilise the workplace.
"Woman's sexuality is disruptive of the dully mechanical workaday world, in which efficiency means uniformity."
If large breasts equal power, is it any wonder then that some women, especially those whose ricebowls depend on their looks, go for plastic surgery to increase their chest size?
While I've never been so crazy as to contemplate implants, I've made many attempts to present a more contoured body shape.
I've gone through numerous bottles of bust creams, done thousands of arm lifts for the chest, and once, in a crazy moment, placed a mail-order for a cup-and-pump contraction that promised to draw out the best in me.
Of course they didn't work.
Wonderbra, though, does an almost miraculous job, if you can bear your breasts being squashed.
I bought my first pairs in London in the early '90s, before they were available here, and couldn't stop marvelling at the, well, wonders of elastic technology. I wore them till they were literally in shreds. I'VE since, however, gotten over my hang-up about having a smallish chest.
It's finally dawned on me that it's futile wishing for a bigger one because breasts are not muscles which you can work on and build up, like, say, the abs.
And with breast cancer being so prevalent among women, I've also realised that it's so superficial to be obsessed with size. So long as they are still healthy, I should be thankful and say hooray.
Besides, when I ask my male friends to name the most desirable woman in the world, it is not Pamela Anderson that they rhapsodise about but the late charming, graceful but washboard-flat actress Audrey Hepburn.
Given that, so what if my cup doesn't runneth over? But, like I'd said, perhaps I'm just sour grapes. Make that size 34AA grapes.
My cup doesn't runneth over
Sumiko Tan
THE SUNDAY TIMES
Men can't stop staring at them while women can't decide whether to upsize or downsize their glands. The whole of society seems obsessed.
Perhaps I'm just a case of sour grapes, but I'm beginning to get a bit weary of the world's fascination with Pamela Anderson's silicon-enhanced breasts.
Unless you've been stuck in the moon these last couple of years, you'd have known that Anderson has the most talked-about and written-about bosom in the world (and, there I go, adding to the literature on her mammary glands).
Not since Dolly Parton's ridiculously eye-catching twin peaks have a pair of breasts been so discussed.
But whereas Parton cuts a cartoon-like figure with her way-over-the-top top, Anderson's assets have been bountiful enough to cause people to stare at them, but still natural-looking enough not to make them snigger.
They have, in fact, thrust the 31-year-old Canadian-born actress into what some would even deem "greatness". She is currently the most famous sex symbol as well as the most popular Internet personality in the universe.
It was reported recently, in the venerable Wall Street Journal no less, that there are more than 145,000 Internet web pages -or the equivalent of 13,300 books -using the former Baywatch star as a lure to hawk products and services.
Now, you would think Anderson would be pleased with the fame, fortune (even if she doesn't profit from her Internet exposure, she is very rich) and adulation that her gravity-defying breasts have brought her.
After all, the reason she had them surgically amplified must have been to grab attention, right?
But no. Two weeks ago, she made further headlines when she had surgery to remove those implants. She's now gone down from a bra size of 36D to 36C.
She explained: "I just didn't feel like I looked very good. I was really kind of getting self-conscious."
Well, I think she'll have to be self-conscious a while longer. More than ever will people be checking out her chest now, just to see how much it has shrunk.
Still, the actress is feeling buoyant. In fact, she said in her "coming out" interview, where she wore a low-cut top showcasing her still-bountiful breasts: "I feel like I'm a petite person."
Petite? Get real.
AS YOU can tell by now, I am envious of women who are generously endowed.
If the old Pamela Anderson were a 10, the new Pamela Anderson an 8 and anorexic Calista Flockhart of Ally McBeal fame a beanpole 2, I guess I would clock in somewhere in the region of a 2.5.
If I held my breath, I could make it a 3, and if I wore my Wonderbra, I could even pass off as a 3.5.
Do all women with smallish assets have a whiff of an inferiority complex like I do?
Until recently, I often wished I was bigger up there. It's hard not to feel that way with the cleavage being celebrated the way it is in the media.
Pick up any fashion magazine -yes, mainstream ones -and breast upon breast pops out at you, both in the advertisements and editorial pages. As you flip through the pages, the almost subliminal message the reader gets is that beautiful women are nearly all stacked.
And, mind you, it is not only men who put a premium on big tops. Most female magazines are run by women editors, and they, too, obviously acknowledge the allure of bigger breasts.
A voluptuous bust, I feel, actually does deserve the admiring attention it receives. Big breasts add sensuality to a woman's silhouette. Their rotundity symbolises, like ripe fruit, her fertility, femaleness and erotic aura -qualities that are attractive to most men.
In fact, this is the reason women who flaunt their breasts are viewed so suspiciously by other women, especially in the workplace, which society has deemed a non-sexual zone.
The American academic Camile Paglia, who, in my book, is the funniest, most commonsensical and readable feminist around, puts it this way in her book Vamps & Tramps: "Most women, as well as most men, gay, instantly appraise whether a woman has "good legs' or a big bosom, not because these attributes diminish her or reduce her to "meat' (another feminist canard) but because they unjustifiably add to her power in ways that may destabilise the workplace.
"Woman's sexuality is disruptive of the dully mechanical workaday world, in which efficiency means uniformity."
If large breasts equal power, is it any wonder then that some women, especially those whose ricebowls depend on their looks, go for plastic surgery to increase their chest size?
While I've never been so crazy as to contemplate implants, I've made many attempts to present a more contoured body shape.
I've gone through numerous bottles of bust creams, done thousands of arm lifts for the chest, and once, in a crazy moment, placed a mail-order for a cup-and-pump contraction that promised to draw out the best in me.
Of course they didn't work.
Wonderbra, though, does an almost miraculous job, if you can bear your breasts being squashed.
I bought my first pairs in London in the early '90s, before they were available here, and couldn't stop marvelling at the, well, wonders of elastic technology. I wore them till they were literally in shreds. I'VE since, however, gotten over my hang-up about having a smallish chest.
It's finally dawned on me that it's futile wishing for a bigger one because breasts are not muscles which you can work on and build up, like, say, the abs.
And with breast cancer being so prevalent among women, I've also realised that it's so superficial to be obsessed with size. So long as they are still healthy, I should be thankful and say hooray.
Besides, when I ask my male friends to name the most desirable woman in the world, it is not Pamela Anderson that they rhapsodise about but the late charming, graceful but washboard-flat actress Audrey Hepburn.
Given that, so what if my cup doesn't runneth over? But, like I'd said, perhaps I'm just sour grapes. Make that size 34AA grapes.
